On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 12:23:46PM +0100, Martin Husemann wrote: > I still think that this should be dealt with (once and for all) at > installation time (as we did for a short period, for some machines and > install methods) - but apparently it is impossible to reach consensus > on the wording and supported methods, so I won't touch it. > > Martin
I don't think more options should be added to the installer (it has too many things that are confusing to a new user already), but I also do not think that manual input of entropy is something that should ever be exposed to users. I also don't think the installer is a place where anything can be solved "once and for all" - there are architectures that do not use it at all, where either a HWRNG is unavailable or is not trusted (e.g. sunxi devices). I still think my idea to record a second of noise from /dev/audio on machines that totally lack other strong sources is a good one. We did already put together the code and test it on a range of hardware and VMs. Overall though I'm reasonably happy with this compromise, although it would still make me sleep safer at night if we very conservatively added a bit from environmental sensors ever so often - perhaps based on a advance measurements from a range of hardware rather than runtime calculations. The man page is very clearly written, aside from the parts that recommend tossing coins.
